Congratulations to Joshua Fleming, Nathan James Carey, Yao Cheng, Hao Luo, Tsz Tin Yu, Mark D. P. Willcox, David StC Black, Edgar H. H. Wong, and Naresh Kumar on the publication of their open-access article in Antibiotics.
The whole group is really proud of you, Josh, for carrying your honours research all the way through to a published paper—congratulations.
The study presents antimicrobial peptide mimic–antibiotic conjugates designed to revitalise current clinical agents through increased membrane permeabilisation while broadening the spectrum of activity of an anthranilamide-based peptide mimic linked to clinically used antibiotics. Three linker strategies were investigated: non-cleavable, enzyme-cleavable, and pH-cleavable connections between the mimic and the antibiotic.
Among the conjugates explored, a primary amide-linked ciprofloxacin conjugate exhibited especially strong antibacterial activity—for example MIC values of 15.6 μM against Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and 7.8 μM against Escherichia coli. A hydrazone-based pH-sensitive conjugate gave an MIC of 15.6 μM against E. coli, while an enzyme-cleavable cephalosporin conjugate provided a complementary route for release of the peptide mimic subunit. Together these conjugates illustrate a promising direction for expanding the utility of peptidomimetic-based antimicrobials.
Open access: Read the full article on MDPI: Antibiotics · DOI 10.3390/antibiotics15050484.